


Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

by involuntaryorange



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Humor, M/M, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 23:52:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11657280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/involuntaryorange/pseuds/involuntaryorange
Summary: Arthur and Eames find themselves accidentally glued together (as you do), and are forced to talk about things Arthur would rather forget.Written for the "Bonds" square of my Inception Bingo card, because I am determined to never interpret a prompt as it was meant to be interpreted.





	Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

**Author's Note:**

> My third and final fic for Inception Bingo! The title is (obviously) from "Stuck in the Middle with You," and is somehow from the PASIV's perspective. Because the PASIV is the one who's stuck in the middle.
> 
> kedgeree11 is an awesome beta who rescued this fic by telling me when and why it made no sense and how to fix it.
> 
> There's a spoiler for The Fifth Element, but that movie came out twenty years ago, so, I mean, if you haven't seen it yet you're probably not gonna.

“I was just trying to help,” Eames says, for the dozenth time. Arthur doesn’t believe him any more than he did the first eleven times.

“I told you I didn’t _need_ help,” Arthur snaps. “I’ve replaced about a thousand pump valves on this thing. I could do it in my sleep.”

“Well… I was trying to learn how to do it?”

“Great. Now you know what _not_ to do.”

“I suppose that’s—”

“Like,” Arthur continues, “don’t randomly jam your hand into the PASIV when someone else already has a hand in there, and that hand is _supergluing a gasket down_.”

“You really should keep acetone around when you’re working with superglue,” Eames says, like _Arthur_ is the one who was being careless in this situation.

“Thanks, Eames. That’s a really helpful tip.”

“So we’re just stuck here until Ariadne gets back.”

“Unless you happen to carry around nail polish remover in those giant fucking pants of yours, yes.”

Eames sighs.

After a few minutes of silence, he ventures, “Since we’re trapped here and all, maybe we should—”

“No,” Arthur interrupts. He briefly wonders just how much it would hurt to rip his hand away, skin be damned. But there’s also a possibility that the PASIV would give way first, and PASIV parts are much harder to scrounge up than new skin is.

“You don’t even know what I was going to propose.”

“I can think of three possibilities, and none of them are things I want to do.”

“That isn’t the impression that I got in Man—”

“Eames, what did I _just say_.”

Another few minutes pass in awkward silence.

“Shall we play Ghost?”

“You cheat at Ghost.”

“How, exactly, does one cheat at Ghost?”

“You always throw in, like, random U’s and S’s and pretend that they belong there. I’m pretty sure you’re making it up.”

“Darling, I’m just—”

“Don’t call me that,” Arthur bites out.

“Arthur.” Eames has the gall to look sad, which only makes Arthur angrier. “Can’t we just _talk_ about it?”

“L.”

“I—” Eames makes a face like he wants to protest, but after a moment he shakes his head in defeat. “I.”

“T.”

“R.”

“ _R?_ What the fuck kind of word starts with _LITR_? I challenge you.”

“Litre.”

“That’s not how that’s spelled!”

“Perhaps not in the colonies, but in England, where we speak _proper_ English — hence the name — that is very much how it’s spelt.”

They play two more rounds, but after Eames gets out of a loss by throwing a U into “favor,” Arthur unilaterally declares the game over.

They sit in silence for a few more minutes before Eames clears his throat. “We really should talk about Managua.”

“That’s actually the complete opposite of what we should do. We should talk about anything _but_ Managua.”

“We could talk about the fact that you’ve been avoiding me _since_ Managua.”

“That’s a subset of Managua, and therefore included in the ‘no talking about Managua’ rule.”

Whatever Eames was about to say is interrupted by Arthur’s phone ringing. Normally this would be a pure blessing, but the phone is sitting on his desk on the other side of the warehouse, and Arthur is currently weighted down by a 15-pound dreamsharing device and a 200-pound forger.

“Fuck. Stand up, we have to get over there.” With a little shuffling and some mild cursing, they manage to get to standing, supporting the PASIV between them with their free hands. “Okay, now we just need to slowly... walk there.”

They start moving.

“No, let’s go sideways, I don’t want to—”

“Which sideways?”

“Move to the left. No, the other left! _My_ left!”

“Well, you should have _specified_ that you meant—”

“Maybe _you_ should have _known_ that I meant my left, because otherwise we’d have to turn 180 degrees and I’m not a _fucking idiot_ —”

“ _OW_! That skin is _attached to me_ , stop trying to scarper with it—”

“Then move your ass, the call is gonna go to voicemail any second—”

“Stop _shouting_ at me—”

“I’m not _shouting_ , I’m _encouraging you loudly—_ ”

They get to the phone just in time, Arthur fumbling to answer it with his left hand. “Hello?” He glares at Eames when Eames lets the PASIV drop to the top of Arthur’s desk more heavily than he’d like.

Ariadne’s voice crackles through the line, inappropriately chipper. “You wanted 100% acetone, right? Not this fancy purple Vitamin E stuff?”

“Oh my god, Ariadne, I’m not giving myself a fucking manicure. Just get the plain acetone.”

There’s a brief silence while Ariadne clearly bites back whatever manicure-themed joke she was planning on making, presumably taking pity on Arthur for being stuck in his current situation. Then she says, “Okay, I’m gonna go check out.”

“Wait, get some Q-Tips too.”

Eames mouths “Q-Tips?” to himself with a perplexed expression.

“Righto. See you in about forty minutes.”

“Forty— the drug store is only ten minutes away!”

“I’m stopping for lunch. Bye!” The phone beeps as Ariadne hangs up. So maybe it wasn’t pity so much as plotting revenge.

Moving back to the workshop area seems pointless, so Arthur settles into his chair, leaving Eames to perch next to the PASIV on the edge of the desk. He scrolls through his e-mails, checks the scores of last night’s football games, plays a few feeble left-handed rounds of Angry Birds.

He can feel Eames staring at the side of his head, strategizing, figuring out what string to tug this time, which button to push.

Arthur grits his teeth.

“Okay, fine, you want to talk about Managua? What specifically?”

 

~~~

 

Arthur felt better than he had in a long time. They’d just finished a seriously challenging job on a Nicaraguan coffee magnate, and Arthur had played his part flawlessly. It’d been a relatively low-risk job, nobody was searching for them, so there was no need for a hasty scrub-and-split.

The four gin and tonics — gins and tonic? — he’d had already at the hotel bar probably weren’t hurting his good mood, either.

While he waited for another drink, he could hear the rest of the team laughing uproariously in their booth. When he’d left for the bar, Quynh was dramatically reenacting the moment when Fernando had tried to conjure up a hammock but had accidentally created a sex swing instead. Arthur returned to the table just as she was wiping tears from her eyes and saying, “…and _then_ , Andrea asked if it was ‘ _one of those ergonomic office chairs’!_ ” Andrea blushed and rolled her eyes as everyone else cackled. Fernando gently thumped her shoulder, probably grateful that her naïveté took the focus away from his subconscious mind’s belief that the jungle was a perfectly good locale for a sex swing.

Eames was quiet, nestled into the corner of the booth with his rum and Coke, but he looked happy enough. For all his ability to command a room, his tendency to elbow his way into everyone’s space and charm and infuriate them in equal measure, he often subsided into the background in social situations like these, seemingly content to observe everyone else and soak in their bonhomie. He smiled when he noticed Arthur looking at him, raised his glass in acknowledgment. Arthur tried not to blush, which was always a losing battle when he was drunk.

And he was definitely drunk. He was right at that perfect sloppy-but-not-irresponsibly-so level where good things seemed even better and bad things didn’t seem to matter. Nicaragua was good. His drink was good. The oppressive mugginess of Managua wasn’t good, but it didn’t matter, because the hotel had air conditioning. Eames was good. Eames had been _brilliant_ in the dream, moving from one identity to the next with the grace of Mikhail Baryshnikov. (Arthur assumed Mikhail Baryshnikov was graceful; to be honest, he’d only ever seen him in Sex and the City.) Arthur had tried to compliment him, to praise him for a job well done, but as usual Eames had shrugged it off as sarcasm and responded with his own.

Arthur’s bladder was protesting, so he slid back out of the booth and heading for the men’s room.

After pissing for what felt like ten minutes, he zipped up and headed for the sinks, just as Eames entered the bathroom, nodding at Arthur before making a beeline for the urinals. Arthur took his time at the sink, scrubbing his hands with the thoroughness of a surgeon, then adjusting his tie and his hair and the lapels of his jacket, until Eames was done and at the sink next to him, engaging in his own ablutions.

Arthur studied Eames's profile for a moment, the deceptive straightness of his nose, out of place amongst the rest of his lush features. Arthur had always been reluctantly fascinated by the study in contrasts that was Eames: the gentleness that belied his ferocity; the hard, tattooed body underneath the sumptuous drape of his clothing; the the hint of Estuary in his otherwise posh accent. Arthur was no stranger to the armor of self-presentation — there was a reason he always slicked his hair back and dressed like a GQ model, after all — but he’d never been able to figure out which part Eames was trying to hide and which part was his disguise.

With five drinks under his belt, it was harder to resist that urge to unpeel.

“So,” Arthur said, leaning a hip against the counter.

“So,” Eames said, grabbing a handful of paper towels.

“I’m pretty drunk,” Arthur remarked.

The corner of Eames’s mouth quirked up. “That you are, darling.”

Arthur took a step closer to him. “And there’s nothing good on TV. It’s all in Spanish.”

Eames’s brow furrowed for a split second, but returned to its usual nonchalant posture. “Yes, that does tend to happen in Spanish-speaking countries.”

“So,” Arthur said, tapping a finger against Eames’s exposed collarbone, “You wanna take advantage of my drunkenness and kill a few hours with me?”

The smile dropped off Eames’s face and he took two steps back. “Arthur,” he said, sounding uncomfortable. “That’s not—”

“It’s not like I have anything better to do.” Arthur looked up at Eames through his lashes. “We can get it out of our systems, once and for all.”

“No.”

“No?” Arthur straightened up, suddenly much more sober than he had been five minutes ago.

“No,” Eames repeated, looking at Arthur with what Arthur could only assume was pity. And then he turned and walked out of the bathroom, not even sparing Arthur a backward glance.

Arthur stood there, humiliated and confused and still pretty fucking drunk. Then he left the bathroom, took the long way around the bar so as not to pass the team’s booth, and got the hell back to his room.

He grabbed a little bottle of rum from the minibar, which was a bad idea for several reasons, but since tonight was already totally fucked Arthur didn’t think it could do that much more harm. He turned on the TV, found something loud and mindless to lose himself in for an hour or so. When the program ended, he discovered that Quynh had apparently had more luck on the pick-up front; he could hear moans and thumping through their shared wall. Normally he’d’ve been happy for her, but right now it was getting in the way of his wallowing. He turned the volume on the TV up and fell asleep.

He woke up a couple of hours later with his throat feeling like sandpaper, desperately craving ice water. All was quiet next door, thank god. He shoved his feet back into his shoes, didn’t bother tying them, grabbed the ice bucket and his room key and trudged out into the hall.

When his bucket was full and he was letting himself back into his room, the door to Quynh’s room swung open. Arthur couldn’t help but look over, wondering what disheveled stranger was about to emerge.

Eames walked out into the hallway. Eames, with his shirt half-buttoned and his hair mussed and his shoes in one hand. Eames, looking at Arthur, frozen in place, eyes wide and full of guilt or embarrassment or post-coital satisfaction or _something_ — Arthur had always thought he could read the emotions in Eames's eyes but apparently he’d been wrong. Eames, opening his mouth like he wanted to say something, lips forming silent syllables.

“Arthur,” he finally managed.

Arthur went back into his room and tried not to slam the door closed behind him.

 

~~~

 

“Okay, fine, you want to talk about Managua? What specifically? The part where you turned me down or the part where you went back to the extractor’s hotel room and fucked her instead?”

Eames jerks his head back at the sheer force of Arthur’s bluntness. “That’s not exactly a fair characterization,” he says, cautiously.

“Really? Which part? Because I was there for the first part, and for the second part I was literally _next door_ , Eames.”

“Well, I didn’t know that, did I!”

“Seriously? You didn’t know?”

“Swear to god, Arthur, I never would have been that noisy if I’d known you were just on the other side of the wall.”

“I’m sorry, _that’s_ what you’re taking away from this? You should have fucked Quynh _more quietly_?”

“I…” Eames falters, at a loss for words, and Arthur feels viciously satisfied.

“Look, whatever. I was interested, you weren’t, you rejected me. I’m a big boy, I can handle it.”

“Arthur, that isn’t—”

“Sure, it was embarrassing. Really fucking embarrassing. I mean, I thought you’d been flirting with me, all those years, and obviously you weren’t. Now that I think about it I don’t even know if you’re into guys.”

“I’m—”

“I _assumed_ you were because of, y’know.” Arthur gestures capaciously at Eames. “But maybe that was just you being British. So, anyway, clearly you were _allowed_ to turn me down, whether it was because you’re not gay or bi or whatever, or because you just weren’t interested in me specifically, and like, obviously you can fuck whoever you want. I was just humiliated. But I got over it.”

“I didn’t—”

“I’m getting over it,” Arthur revises. “I _will_ get over it. But that’s exactly why I don’t want to talk about this, because—”

“Arthur!” Eames rubs his free hand aggressively down his face. “For someone who doesn’t want to talk about this, you’re certainly doing a bang-up job not letting me get a word in edgewise.”

“I really don’t see how there’s anything you could say that would make this less humiliating.”

“I could explain why I turned you down.”

“Oh, good, an inventory of my flaws. That sounds like a really great way to rub salt into the wound.”

“Arthur, if you’ll just let me talk… I wasn’t looking for something casual.”

“You didn’t want casual sex,” Arthur says flatly. “So when’s the wedding with Quynh? I haven’t gotten my save-the-date. Are you registered at Bloomingdale’s?” He picks up his phone and pretends to type things into the browser, until Eames gently takes the phone from him and lays it back on the desk.

“I wasn’t looking for something casual _with you_ ,” Eames clarifies.

“Okay, gotcha, so I wasn’t even good enough for a drunk one-night stand. I feel so much better now.”

Eames groans in frustration, which seems totally hypocritical, because of the two of them, Arthur is not the one being frustrating.

“Let me try it this way,” Eames says. “I wasn’t looking for something _casual_ with you. But you made it abundantly clear that that’s what was on the table.”

“I don’t even—”

“I mean, honestly, ’take advantage’ of you? ‘Get it out of our systems’?” Eames spits the words out with a frown.

“I was being flippant!” Arthur says. “You’re always flippant! You’re always teasing me and needling me and acting like, I don’t know. How was I supposed to know that I needed to quote fucking _Shakespeare_ or whatever to get you into bed?”

“See, that’s precisely what I’m talking about,” Eames says. “Why, in your version of things, does it always sound like one of us is tricking the other?”

“That’s what _we do_ , Eames!” Arthur wishes he had both hands free so he could properly convey his exasperation. “We snipe at each other and you try to knock my chair over and I draw unflattering pictures of you in my notebook. You’re never serious about _anything_ when it comes to me.”

“I’m serious about this. This isn’t something I can ‘get out of my system,’ dar— _Arthur_. And if you can, then I’d rather not.”

“You sure seemed to ‘get it out of your system’ with our extractor,” Arthur grumbles.

“I was sad and angry and an idiot. And I swear, Arthur, I didn’t think you would ever find out. Especially not… like that.”

Arthur thinks back to the moment Eames stepped out of Quynh’s room, the moment he’d noticed Arthur looking at him. That hadn’t been embarrassment or guilt in his eyes — it had been _terror_. Sheer, unadulterated terror. No wonder Arthur hadn’t recognized it; Eames wasn’t a man who scared easily.

Now, looking at Eames, Arthur can see guilt and embarrassment, but underneath it there’s still that fear, that look of twitchy panic that suggests that Arthur isn’t the only one who’s considered leaving skin behind to get away.

Arthur lets out a long breath. “Jesus, Eames, _obviously_ I can’t get it out of my system. I’ve been avoiding you for eight months. I’ve had actual breakups less devastating. You honestly thought one night would be enough for me?”

“I had no reason to think otherwise,” Eames says. “You mystify me, Arthur.”

“ _Me_? I’m like the least mystifying person on the planet.”

Eames shakes his head ruefully. “That’s what you want people to think. But I watch you, Arthur. You wear thousand-pound suits and slick your hair back like a gay mafioso, but you tilt your chair back like a kid in detention. You write in your pretentious little Moleskine using your pretentious little fountain pen with literally the worst penmanship I’ve ever seen. You travel the world and you can’t pronounce Yusuf’s name properly.”

“What are you talking about? Yusuf.”

“Do you honestly not hear the difference?” Eames asks, seemingly baffled, before continuing. “You listen to French cabaret music but I’m pretty sure your favorite film is The Fifth Element.”

“There’s nothing wrong with The Fifth Element!”

“ _Really_ , Arthur? The fifth element is _love_.” Eames rolls his eyes while he attempts to do one-handed jazz hands. “And that’s another thing: you act as though you don’t care about anything, as though you’re above it all. But I’ve seen the way you talk about Mal when Dom isn’t around.”

“I thought you _weren’t_ inventorying my many flaws,” Arthur manages through the lump in his throat, not sure if it’s anger or embarrassment keeping it there.

“They’re not flaws, darling. They’re puzzles.” Eames says the word “puzzles” with a slight smile, like he likes the feel of it on his lips.

“You’re one to talk, you know,” Arthur says.

“I know.”

“It’s not like you’re any easier to figure out,” Arthur says.

“I know.”

Arthur stares at the PASIV, at the IV lines coiled neatly around the spools. “We literally solve puzzles for a living. Why are we so bad at this?”

Eames _hmm_ s and moves his shoulders back and forth. Being stuck to a metal briefcase isn’t great for your back, Arthur has learned. “I don’t know that we solve puzzles, so much as we create puzzles that are impossible for others to solve.”

“So we’ll never be able to figure each other out.”

“Not fully, no,” Eames says. After a pause, he adds, “But I think I could learn a fair bit, following you round and round your Penrose steps.”

Arthur bites his lip to hide his smile, but he knows his dimples are giving him away. Fucking dimples.

“Especially if I’m a few steps behind you,” Eames says.

“Very funny.”

“You know, so I can look directly at your arse.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Your trousers are even tighter in the dreamscape, do you do that on purpose?”

“Oh my god, Eames, shut up,” Arthur says, without heat (unless you count the heat he feels on his cheeks).

“Make me,” Eames says. He’s navigating them back to familiar waters, Arthur knows, but this time his eyes look gentle and his thumb is rubbing against the back of Arthur’s hand where they’re trapped in the PASIV. Arthur rises from his chair and maneuvers to stand in front of Eames, who moves his knees apart to make room, and finally, improbably, they shut each other up.

A little while later, the warehouse door swings open, accompanied by the sound of plastic bags rustling and Ariadne announcing, “Your conquering heroine retur— uhh, hey guys.” She jingles her keys uncomfortably. “I brought you back sandwiches but I’m guessing you don’t want them right now.”

“Just the acetone will be fine,” Arthur says, not bothering to look away from Eames’s face. It’s a good face. He hears Ariadne set a bag down on his desk, and then her footsteps retreat toward the stairwell.

“I’m gonna go, uh, see how Cam’s doing with the distillation? I’ll be back later, or actually, how about you just text me when you’re, y’know, done with whatever it is you’re doing. Bye! And you’re welcome!” The stairwell door clangs shut behind Ariadne, and Arthur reaches for the bag she set down.

“I almost don’t want to unglue us,” Eames remarks, looking at the bottle in Arthur’s hand.

“I promise you, Eames,” Arthur says, giving in to the urge to bite Eames’s earlobe, “this’ll be a lot better if I have the use of my dominant hand.”

“Quick,” Eames says, “give me the acetone.”

 


End file.
